


because light reverses, because the dead return

by 1248, Tiili97



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Buried Alive, Character Death, Claustrophobia, Do Not Archive (The Magnus Archives), Hurt/Comfort, Mild Gore, Whump, canon-typical suffering, for the unknowing and all the awfulness therein
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2020-11-25 16:18:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20914976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1248/pseuds/1248, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tiili97/pseuds/Tiili97
Summary: "Very well then, officer, take me away. And Martin?""Yes, Elias?"Elias opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again with a shake of his head."Actually, never mind. I will see how it plays out."Martin let out an annoyed sigh as Elias left. Always so goddamn cryptic.Hopefully Jon and the others would be back soon to make sense of things.-Here's a hypothetical question: What would happen if no one noticed that Jonathan Sims survived the Unknowing?What if they looked at his stopped heart and still lungs and decided he was dead?What happens when you bury an Archivist?





	1. Chapter 1

_ "Very well then, officer, take me away. And Martin?" _

_ "Yes, Elias?" _

_ Elias opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again with a shake of his head. _

_ "Actually, never mind. I will see how it plays out." _

_ Martin let out an annoyed sigh as Elias left. Always so goddamn cryptic. _

_ Hopefully Jon and the others would be back soon to make sense of things. _

-

It wasn’t Massoud’s first time with a disaster.

He’d been on shift the night that an apartment building had fallen in on itself, structural problems, no sabotage or anything, but so many bodies. They’d all come in at once, the closest hospital being the one he worked at.

He remembered the smell of dust that clung to all the patients. The crying and screaming from those who had come in still conscious, and the silent agony of the rest who weren’t able to talk.

He’d had nightmares for weeks, and thought that at least he only had to have the worst night of his life once.

This was different. There was no grief, aside from the lined carved into the faces of his coworkers, more of a general kind of despair.

So many of the bodies from the wax museum had been mutilated before the explosion. The police hadn’t mentioned it, but everyone who’d worked on them knew. They were all dead, and they had all _ been _ dead, rate of decomposition be damned. 

The bodies hummed, and smiled, and laughed, sometimes, but they were dead. 

They only got in a few with their skin still intact, and those were thankfully more obviously deceased.

One large, bald man. He looked as if he’d been stabbed to death, bleeding from a severed artery before the building exploded. Massoud did his best to stay detached when he noticed what were indisputably marks from human teeth dug into the man’s forearm. 

Time of death was noted, the body was tagged and bagged.

There was another man, who he would call young if not for the grey in his hair and the tired lines of his face. He looked as if he hadn’t even been there when the collapse occurred, completely uninjured save for the fact that he was dead.

His upper body was pitted with round scars, which reminded him strongly of the way a piece of fruit looked after it had been left for the bugs. There were faint scars from a long-healed cuts on either side of his left wrist and the front of his throat, and one of his hands looked to be severely burned. All of these were looked old, and gave no insight into what had halted this man’s heart and stopped his breath.

It was such a clean body, that he almost thought it could be asleep, if not for the unnatural stillness of the chest. 

He graciously ignored the movement of the eyes in their sockets, the pupils that constricted when he shone light into them. If the other bodies, singing softly through torn throats, had taught him anything, it was that sometimes death was kinder.

And so he recorded the time of death and tagged the body. And when the eyelids flashed open to reveal the eyes flicking back and forth, sightless and frantic, he gently pressed them shut again, and finished closing the body bag, leaving this man to what he hoped would be a dreamless rest.

-

Basira had been able to claim the body, of course, all stiff upper lip and hands clenched to hide how they shook standing amongst the wreckage of the Unknowing. The body had been wheeled off and Basira had found herself standing with nothing but a business card for the crown’s coroner. 

It was the only body she claimed that day. They found Tim later, in bits and pieces at the explosion’s epicenter, and Daisy…

She didn’t want to think about Daisy. Just as she didn’t want to think about how she had walked out of there long before the explosions had gone off - saved her own hide while the others saved the world.

Stupid, she knew. Survivor’s guilt was no stranger to her, and she knew it wasn’t rational. There was nothing more she could have done: didn’t need a shrink to tell her that.

Didn’t matter, though. It still sat like a heavy lump in her chest as she got on the train back to London. And she called the coroner and set up an appointment. Her voice didn’t shake the whole call through, and she thought about funds and burial fees as the city passed her by.

As she stepped out from the cab by the Magnus Institute and came face to face with a haggard, pacing Martin. 

“Basira?” He exclaimed, hurrying down the steps to meet her. “How did it go? Are the others coming?” 

She’d done this so many times. She knew how it went: _ I’m sorry, sir, but I’m here to inform you that your boyfriend / girlfriend / partner / brother / sister / son / daughter / spouse / parent has passed away. _

Simple, and professional, she just had to get through it and get back to Daisy in the squad car. Daisy with her feet on the dashboard and a lazy grin, some irreverent comment about lonely widows. Then she would nag her about having dirty boots on government property, and Daisy would say something sarcastic, and then they would-

Oh. 

Right. 

No. No, she didn’t have time for this. She just had to put away the anger and the pity and the guilt and grief and _ painworryterror _ and… do this.

She looked up - she hadn’t realized she’d looked down - and met Martin’s hopeful, teary eyes.

Basira didn’t have to say anything, in the end. Martin understood. She watched as his face crumpled up, his entire world shifting in a matter of seconds. He tripped forward half a step and Basira caught him - he was bigger than her by half a measure but he leaned in anyway, sobs already working their way up his throat.

Basira didn’t try and comfort him, but she didn’t move away, either. Inside, deep in her chest, was a sudden stab of agony, and with it came the desire to start crying into Martin’s chest, to start tearing at her hair and scream until her throat was raw, but she ignored it with all the professionalism she had left.

As her eyes stayed resolutely dry, she vowed to make sure that the two of them - three, if Melanie stuck around - would make it through this. One way or another. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *elias voice* nooo don't get buried alive youre so sexy aha

Martha paused in her explanation of her services, thinking of how to word the next part.

“And… I think it would be best with a closed casket. For, ah, the comfort of the bereaved.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever’s best,” The woman on the other side of the call responded, quick and clipped. “We’d like to have the burial sometime this week. Is that doable?”

“Definitely,” she replied, relieved that it had gone so easily. It wasn’t that the man’s corpse was mutilated - it was surprisingly pristine, for an explosion victim. 

No, it was the sporadic twitching of the eyelids that unnerved her. She’d had to check his pulse several times, just to make sure he wasn’t going to just rise up and start walking out of there. But no pulse, no breathing - and she had the death certificate, sure enough. It was all very cut and dry, except for that damnable twitching.

She was happy to get it out of her office as soon as possible. 

-

The funeral had been... very empty.

Melanie hadn't come. Basira had come only out of a twisted sense of obligation: She’d seen this whole process through, might as well be there for the end, right? And.. there was a sort of satisfaction, a grim feeling that at least there was one less potential monster in the world. She’d known about Daisy’s plans. Daisy wouldn’t have wanted her to, but she’d known. She hadn’t tried to stop her. Jon wasn’t a monster yet, but there was potential there for sure.

(She didn't know that she’d have to fill that role, now. The Eye was ever-hungry, and already looking for a new way to sate its appetite. Elias grumbled in his prison cell but duly moved his gaze to her - for now. He’d make sure Jon returned when the time was right. And meanwhile, having two Avatars couldn’t hurt.)

Martin had been there, though. So had Georgie, with the weird gravitational pull of a full moon as they stepped onto the graveyard soil. Between them they managed enough grief and love to fill the small chapel to the ceiling. 

Once the ceremony was concluded, the chapel workers carried the chest out and sunk it into the earth, slowly and respectfully. Basira, Martin and Georgie had stood back awkwardly as the priest finished her final words and threw one - two - three handfuls of dirt onto the closed casket of the coffin. 

They stood there as the priest left, and as the digger began his slow, tedious work of covering up the coffin. Only then did Basira give them both a gentle tug on the shoulder to begin drawing them out of the churchyard. They followed slowly, as if in a trance, both tucked away in their own grief. 

  
Basira threw a last glance at the slowly filling grave, burying Jonathan Sims, the Archivist, away. 

Then she turned back to her two still very living charges. No matter. She had an Archive to take care of - no matter what that Peter character insisted, they were _ hers _. 

-

His Archivist’s heart beats in his ears.

Elias lies in his cot, and stares at the ugly concrete ceiling. It’s possible he may have… miscalculated. He was an agent of the Eye, he lived to Watch and Know. Curiosity was expected, if not demanded.

But when he'd refrained from telling Martin that his beloved Jonathan would survive, he had thought it was more of a playful delay. A mere setback in relentless trek of his Archivist towards their perfect inevitability.

But now Jonathan Sims was a solid six feet underground, dreaming. Screaming in what remained of his awareness. Elias had anticipated nightmares, but those were nothing in the face of the unique terror of being buried alive.

It wasn’t right, and it wasn’t _ his _. The Beholding had no claim over such fears, and it was by his error that Jonathan had been exposed to such corrupting influences.

If Elias were the kind of man to needlessly worry, he would have bitten his nails to the quick. The Buried was a slow fear. It crept, and waited, and it was as patient as an open grave.

But six months was enough time. It wanted Jonathan. It wanted him, alive and choking on dry soil, pounding fists on his unrelenting casket, sobbing for those would never help. And, free of Elias’s help, it had him.

The day the Buried decided to take what it wanted, Elias clenched his fists until his nails cut his palms, and he tightened his jaw until his teeth wanted to crack.

Martin was formless, a vague shape in the fog by this point (damn that Peter not only declined to assist directly, but had also closed another channel as he did it). Basira actively pushed him out with all of the prowess that simultaneously frustrated him and filled him with pride. And Melanie… well, Melanie would sooner swallow barbed wire than follow any mysterious urges that made themselves apparent in her angry little mind.

There was no saving Jon, and more importantly, there would be no easy recovery of him after he had been stolen right out of Elias’s hands.

But, still, it was not becoming of an avatar of the Beholding to look away.

So, as Elias was robbed, he watched, and he regretted, and he _ hated, _until Jon had been entirely swallowed up by the dirt and pressure and not even the Ceaseless Watcher could keep him in sight. 

\---

Jon had been walking in dreams under the Eye for so, so long. The Eye watched him endlessly, kept him in suspense as he observed the terrible nightmares of the people he’d fed to it. He knew its weight: dispassionate, heavy, and never-ending. He knew the weight of Elias’ gaze as well: filled with sickly pride that slithered along his veins and made him shiver in disgust. Always watched. Always watching.

And then, impossibly, it blinked. 

And blinked again. And it stayed closed. Even in the dream, it was so wrong and unnatural that Jon awoke with a jolt.

Jon woke with dirt in his mouth and fear in his throat, choking on both as he tried to push outwards, free himself from the weight on his chest. 

He couldn’t, of course. His arms were trapped under ton after ton of dirt and rock and mud, he couldn’t move, he couldn’t _ breathe _ \- _ toomuchtooclosetoocloseicannotbreathe _

Jon did not stop trying to scream even as the dirt found its way into every part of his body. Terror consumed his mind even as the last, scrabbling remnants of his Sight told him that there was no hope, no way out - not even an up.

He screamed, and he writhed, and he feared.

  
The Buried had him.

And it was not letting him go.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey you remember Georgie? I wonder what she's up to.

Jon had kept screaming for a long, long time, panic and terror suffusing every aspect of his being as the dirt and pressure threatened to take every last spark of awareness from him.

But in the end, even fear can give way to the mundane. And Jon - curious Jon, ever-thirsty Jon, who had never read a book twice in his life - began to grow… numb. 

Not unafraid, no. The fear was still there, spiking every time the crush grew stronger, terror that this would be the last time, that it would never stop crushing until Jon truly became one with it. But it was an almost detached kind of fear, animal and instinctive, and around it, between it, Jon found himself capable of thought once again.

_ "What's happening?"  _

panicked and thoughtless at first, a simple question between the slow, beating heart of the crushing force. Jon did not have the capacity for more.

_ "Where am I?"  _

The answer for this one came unbidden, pushing into his mind as he desperately reached out for a response. 

_ The crush deep dark too close I cannot breathe no up no down just  _ ** _The Buried_ ** .

Terrifying though it might have been, it - helped, somehow. He Knew something. That meant he could know other things.

_ "Who am I?" _

Jon.

Archivist.

Buried.

He didn't get far, in this one.

_ "How did I get here?" _

Bingo.

The memories were there, hidden underneath the fear and panicked blindness. The Unknowing was… difficult to remember, but he knew the essential pieces. 

And the months, and months, and months of dreaming… 

Jon almost wished he could forget those again. 

But none of that was an answer to the question. Jon gathered every ounce of concentration he had, blocking out the terrifying crush as much as he could when it was inside his heart - and he Looked.

Oh.

Oh god no. 

\---

Even when Jon is dead and buried, he is in Georgie’s dreams.

She can’t call them nightmares, as they inspire no terror. But it is an unpleasant dream, of a night that she has no real desire to return to.

She’s back in her school, back in the dissection room, and Jon is watching her with his eyes shining and unblinking, face as cold as she never has never seen in all the time she’s known him. He’s wearing a hospital gown, likely what he was buried in. 

More disturbingly, the gown is filthy with dirt, and he has clumps of soil in his hair. When she glimpses his his hands, the fingers are stained black, from earth or decomposition she cannot tell. (That part, she knows, can only be a result of the strange logic of dreams. She’d seen Jon’s casket herself, and there hadn’t been any sort of opening that would allow dirt inside.)

Georgie had managed to muster some anger towards Jon, for the way he acted, for his refusal to seek help, for dying in what he must have known was a suicide mission from the start. But in the dream, knowing that he is still trapped even after his death, she only pities him.

She watched him back, and almost wishes she could talk to him. There’d be nothing to say, not really, but she still misses him, although maybe more for the man he could have been than the man he was.

It’s settled into a routine as much as it had already been, before Jon died. About once a week, she relives one of the worst moments of her life, and her dead ex watches her with impassive eyes that gleam as bright and inhuman as a cat’s. Each time, he appears to her slightly more covered in earth, a little less like how she remembers him.

Georgie wakes up sad and spends the morning in a melancholy haze. She thinks guiltily of poor Melanie, who she hasn’t yet informed that her service to an evil god will almost certainly continue after her death. 

And she carries on, as she always has. She doesn’t visit the grave.

This all changes when a bemused Oliver Banks obligingly visits the place where the Archivist lies (dreaming, unaware of the fate that awaits him) and offers a statement to the cold headstone bearing the name Jonathan Sims, as well as a piece of valuable advice.

And, much to the simultaneous consternation of a distant but watchful Elias Bouchard and the delight of the ever-patient Choke, Jonathan Sims begins to wake up in his casket.

Georgie is unaware of all of this, of course. She  _ is _ touched by the fears, but her inclinations lie in a different direction than any that would have given her an early warning for what she saw that night.

It has been just over a week since she’d had her last dream with Jon in it. There’s no real system to it, but Georgie could sometimes feel when it was going to happen. The watched-feeling would linger during the day prior, and she would feel unusually exhausted by the late afternoon.

Honestly, it was mostly irritating by the point. It wasn’t enough that some eldritch fear god (and/or her ex-boyfriend) had to feed on her regularly for some reason, but they also had to interfere with her daily tasks.

When she finally gave in and let herself drop off on her couch, abandoning a relatively boring documentary to its conclusion, she stepped right into the dream.

And it felt different. There was still the heavy feeling like being studied under a microscope, or being an insect with wings pinned to a board, but something was missing.

Georgie ignored the numbness that had started to spread through her chest, and glanced around. It only took her a moment to realise that Jon wasn’t anywhere in the room.

Everything else was in place. The room was as it always looked, and across the floor was spread the bodies of the cadavers used for teaching intermingled with the bodies of most of the people that Georgie had ever cared about, all stiff and grey and whispering horrible truths to each other.

But Jon was missing. She felt rather like she’d been rehearsing for a play for months, and then the lead actor had failed to turn up for a showing. 

She stepped out of the room, something she’d never been able to do before.

Outside was not the rest of her former university, but instead a tidy cemetery. 

It all seemed vaguely familiar, but still she felt no fear. If the dream was trying to shake things up and rattle some new emotions loose, it was not doing a very good job so far.

She wandered between the headstones for some time, very nearly enjoying herself in the peaceful grounds. Georgie toyed with the idea that maybe Jon had moved on, somehow. Maybe this was his way of saying goodbye, as the horrible force that had kept him in her dreams finally released him from its hold.

Almost as soon as she thought of Jon, she almost tripped over a headstone, accidentally kicking something and hearing it shatter.

She knows who it belongs to before she has time to read it. Martin had been very consistent about leaving flowers at Jon’s grave, back when she visited it regularly, and the arrangement was exactly as she remembered it. A bunch of multicolored tulips, left in clear glass vase Basira had contributed.

Of course it had been the vase that she’d smashed.

The tulips were scattered across the patch of soil, looking sad and wilted in spite of their cheery coloring. She knelt to gather them, ignoring the shards of glass as they cut into her knees.

It was then that Georgie began to hear a faint, muffled sort of sound. Like someone using a hammer very far away. Or like someone knocking on a door from all the way across a house.

She looked around, and saw no one. The grounds were empty, except for her. And then she leaned down to the flowers she’d collected so she could pull them into her arms- and froze.

The sound was louder when she got closer to the ground. Percussion against wood. A persistent, steady drumming. As regular as a heartbeat.

Georgie could no longer feel fear. She didn’t know if it had been burned out or stolen from her, but nothing could scare her since that day she’d understood death with all the intimacy of a corpse.

So, when she realised what she was hearing from underneath her, separated by grass and dirt and wood, what little other emotions she’d been experiencing flickered and drowned in the crashing tidal wave of nothing.

It was Jon, down there. 

Buried alive. Banging bloody, broken-fingered fists against the nailed-shut lid of his casket, and it did not matter if she heard it or imagined it, because she knew he was screaming as loudly as he could.

Georgie been right when she’d thought that the dream was trying something new, but this was not in pursuit of her fear after all. It had always been about Jon, and her place had been to provide the footsteps that unknowingly walked over his grave.

She finally looked up, to see the Eye, the thing that was eating her and Jon, Jon’s god and tormentor in equal measure. It hung in the sky, too white and wet to mistake for the moon, with a great black pupil fixed on the scene with unerring interest.

But, as she looked back up at it, it twitched slightly. She saw a rivulet of red appear in the blank sclera, a broken blood vessel. 

There were rivers of dust falling from above. Thick and fast and everywhere, dirt started to rush in from the edges of her vision as the cemetery was swallowed into a sinkhole, dark and crushing.

She looked back into the Eye, as a great flood of soil fell from the sky like the world had gone inverted.

And slowly, tortuously slow, she saw it blink.

Georgie woke up in her bed. She looked over herself. Her nail beds were caked with dirt and when she leaned over to inspect the fresh cuts on her legs, a flower petal fell from her shoulder. 

And when she reached inside herself, for her pain and sadness and anger and… well. 

When she tried to feel, there was nothing there.

She visits the grave, the next day. It looks the same. She isn't sure why it would look different. 

She isn't sure she cares. 

Georgie stands there, for a few long minutes, before she leaves again. 

A cold wind brings the smell of wet earth and rotting flowers, but she does not stop. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes u just forget how to have emotions ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No one is okay but things are not as terrible as they once were

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait I'm just terrible at keeping to a schedule

Jon did not know how much time had passed. In the Endless Pressure, time and space did not - exist, not as it did elsewhere.

Jon simply existed.

After he’d realized what happened, he’d screamed and called for help, of course. Of course he had, through a throat that healed just as fast as he could make it raw and ragged. He’d broken his hands and feet banging and kicking against the unyielding wood, despairing when they healed with stubborn rapidity.

He’d called for all of them, anyone who could be listening, anyone who might, might save him. Tim, Basira, Daisy, Martin… He started to cry, as he screamed Georgie’s name, begged for her to  _ do _ something, but it was just as useless as the rest.

Shortly after that, he’d started to shout for Elias. Elias, who for all his dispassionate lack of concern over Jon’s general state of well-being, had to at least  _ need _ him for something, had to  _ see _ that things had gone so wrong. Early on, it was almost as if he could feel Elias noticing, or listening, or  _ something _ , at the very periphery of his knowledge, but that had faded with time, if it had ever been more than than a desperate delusion.

(It had been an animal terror that started him kicking and screaming when the walls pressed in first, simple instinct. But when he had looked, and Known what had happened: had Seen the nurse zip the body bag closed over his open eyes, Seen Georgie sobbing harshly into her hands before the casket, and Seen Martin looking lost in front of his headstone, bouquet held limply at his side… the horror he felt was all human.) 

It had taken a while for the new flavor of fear, the terror of being forgotten and unrescued, of footsteps on the dirt above him, to grow as routine as the horrible ever-presence of the Choke. 

It took longer for him to stop calling for help, instead pressing palms flat against the walls of his casket where his blood had dried, brown as the earth. Contemplative. 

Reaching for Beholding confirmed it was still there, still inextricably part of him, but distant in a way it had never been. Even in his early days as the Archivist, he could see in retrospect that the Eye had quickly sunken in, close to the skin, nestled in the parts of him that had made him a natural for the role in the first place. His shameless curiosity, his cold detachment, his fervent obsession. 

That was still him, of course, but it was smaller. Compressed, perhaps. The lens of the Beholding had been been obstructed, soil rubbed into the eye until it relented and glanced away. Loosened its grip on him. And of course  _ too-close-I-cannot-breathe _ was not one to let things go.

It didn’t make sense to him, for what felt like an endless, timeless stretch. Two powers, one him, still alive, still claimed, still starving.

But after turning the idea over in his mind for long enough, excruciatingly aware of both the ravenous need for a statement and the dirt that had settled comfortably into his mouth and ears and nose, all but his eyes, it finally clicked.

Gerry had explained the powers as colors. They couldn’t be divided into clean categories, because they existed in shades, overlapping and mixed.

If a power could be two things at once, why couldn’t he? 

\---

Basira stared at the coffin.

Beacon and Hope - Or just Hope now, she guessed - had delivered the coffin, given a statement, and then left. She didn’t know where he’d been hiding for eight months, or why he’d decided to come now. Working through trauma, maybe. Like they all were. 

Basira winced as she leaned back against her desk, jostling her left arm. It was still in a sling from when Melanie had almost tried to cut it off when she got that bullet out of her leg.

She’d… known it was there. Known what it was doing. Basira wanted to chalk it up to having gotten to know Melanie, and her previous knowledge of how gun wounds worked, but… No. She wasn’t thinking more about that. 

It had happened, she had paid the cost, and all she got out of it was nerve damage and a coworker that got more and more distant every day.

  
That’s why she had to go into the coffin. Daisy was in there somewhere, she  _ knew _ it. All she had to do was find her. 

Basira stared at the coffin some more. There was no reason to wait. Melanie was gone god knows where, Martin was busy following Peter Lukas around like a lost puppy, and she’d left a letter detailing where her will was stashed and what to do if she didn’t come back. It was all set.

With a deep breath, Basira stuck the key in the lock and turned.

The chains unravelled with terrifying speed and the coffin slammed open, revealing stairs leading into the depths. Basira felt the smell of wet earth rising to meet her, bringing with it the uncontrollable urge to go deeper. 

She hefted the coil of rope over her shoulder, checked the knot around her waist and around one of the pillars, and then put a foot inside.

Before she could take another step, however, a new noise rose from the coffin.

It was a slow, rumbling noise of moving earth, and the scent of graveyard and stale air filled her nose. She took a step back as she spotted movement, frantically looking around for a weapon. She didn’t know something could come OUT of the coffin, what the  _ fuck _ . 

She grabbed a paperweight, cursing herself for not being prepared enough. The darkness of the coffin was shifting, shaping into something like a person - 

The paperweight shattered against the floor as Basira gasped.

“Jon?” 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's the end! Kinda. We have many ideas for what else could come after this (Martin's reaction, Peter's reaction, Elias' imminent and untimely death, more victim blaming, Jon exploring his powers...) but who knows where inspiration will take us! 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and commenting and validating my terrible ideas <3


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is for everyone who commented, but ESPECIALLY you who offered to venmo 5 american dollars in exchange for everyones reactions. we love you ( but please don't send us money, that's illegal). your comment was so funny that we ended up spending 6 hours writing everyone's reactions. thank you so much.

Basira had had a rough few days. Weeks. Months. Between becoming the new head Archivist - informally, at least, as Elias wasn’t around to promote her - and fighting off everything out for their blood, she had been forced to get used to a lot of weird shit very quickly. 

This did not stop the fact that a dead man had just stepped out of a literal coffin from being… difficult to grasp.

“You were dead.” 

He had been, he must have been - Jon just shrugged.

“Not quite.” His voice was low and hoarse, like he’d been coughing up dirt for months. He probably had. Basira quickly pulled up a chair and fell into it - things weren’t likely to get easier to handle from here on out.

“We _ buried _ you. I - I spoke to the fucking coroner.” How hadn’t she noticed? How had no one noticed? 

“And she didn’t want to worry you. Just as the sectioned nurse thought it would be kinder for me to die.” 

His words were sharp, and with a jolt of familiarity Basira recognised that tone. It was familiar footing, grounding in a way that almost gave her vertigo, and it reminded her of what was important. What was actually important.

“Daisy.” She gestured towards the coffin. Jon blinked, apparently thrown. 

“Excuse me?” 

“She’s still - down there. Breakon and Hope, they were - well, Hope. He was here. Apparently she… killed Breakon. And they put her in there.” 

She’d been so angry when she’d heard it, itching to bury a knife in between those soulless eyes, but something had held her back. Maybe it was knowing it was a battle she couldn’t win - maybe it was the pang of sharp familiarity at the way Hope spoke of losing his other half. Or maybe how that anger and violence sounded so much like Daisy. So much like how they had been, not a year ago.

“Alright,” Jon said, voice low and determined. Basira had barely blinked out of reverie as she saw Jon open the coffin _ again _, and ice-cold terror shot through her.

She wasn’t losing anyone else. Not again.

“Jon, don’t you dare go in there again. We just got you back. I’ll go.” 

Jon, one foot already on the stairs, turned to look at her with incredulity. 

  
“You’ll die.” 

He spoke with absolute certainty, and took one step more after he did so.

She grit her teeth. She hadn’t thought he was one of the Stranger’s monsters, but now she _ knew _ for sure it was him, grating on her nerves with only two words. She started walking forward, acidic words already forming in her throat, but jerked to a stop when her rope caught on a chair. Before she had time to untangle it, Jon had already descended, no trepidation in his steps, and the lid of the coffin slammed shut in front of her eyes.

Basira swore, long and loud. 

-

There was always noise in the Buried. Stones grinding into dust, earth tumbling over itself, the distant scream and sobs of other victims, trapped like her.

So when Daisy picked up the sound of calm arguing, she thought for sure she was hallucinating.

The words were indistinct at first, but grew slowly clearer through the sound of moving dirt.

“- I know, I know, she’s yours, but she’s mine as well. You’ve wrung her dry already. No, I won’t give anyone in exchange. I won’t - that doesn’t count! Fine. No, no, it’ll be good. Trust me. I mean it.” 

The ever-present darkness was unwinding around her - not by much, but as if it had moved back, given her space, and - 

She drew a breath, unhindered. Another. 

And then, terrible and wonderful, a hand settled on her shoulder.

“Daisy? It’s me, Jon.” 

“...Jon?” She hadn’t spoken, properly spoken, in so long, she was afraid he wouldn’t be able to understand her. 

“Yes. Come on, I’m getting us both out of here.” And with that he _ tugged _, and she lurched forward, legs screaming with agony at suddenly being made to hold her up again. Jon waited impatiently as she found her footing, but she didn’t feel bad for making him wait. Her mind, slowly coming back from the grip of constant terror, whirred with questions.

“Were you… talking? With the Buried?” 

Jon made an uncomfortable sound.

“Uh… sort of. It’s not. Desperately happy to let you go.” The earth above and below and to all sides of them rumbled, and Daisy couldn’t stop the full-body flinch if she had tried.

“So, you’re with them now?” She asked, unable to keep the disgust-fear-hate out of her voice. 

“No. Yes. Both. It’s been… It’s been a lot.” Jon’s voice was quiet, and the earth around them crept a few inches closer. Daisy knew that tone. She knew that fear and resignation. 

“I wanted to kill you, before,” she said. _ But no longer _ , she didn’t say. _ I know how you feel, _ she didn’t say. _ I have been both bound and unbound and hurt and whole and I never want to cause another creature pain again _, she didn’t say. 

He laughed. Of course he did. And he Knew what she didn’t say. Of course he did. 

“That’s fair,” he said, and Daisy could feel herself smiling. 

-

Jon looks like his nightmares, half-risen from his desk chair with his eyes bright and intent. He’s smiling at Martin, looking incredulous and surprised, and- and just _ happy _to see him.

It was like the horrible dream that Martin kept having after his Mum’s funeral. 

In the dream, he would go into work, and he would just step down in the Archives without thinking, just like before the Unknowing and Peter Lukas and everything. And he’d walk down the stairs, and there’d be talking from behind the door, and he would always have exactly the same thought, _ oh no, Basira and Melanie are having another row _.

But when he opened the door to interrupt, it was Tim and Sasha. Tim, without his scars, without the scowl, and Sasha looking like the polaroid that Jon had eventually dug up to pin to the corkboard, like a lovely stranger. 

After waking, he could never quite remember what the two of them were talking about, or what they were doing. Just that they were laughing. And when they noticed him in the doorway, they smiled and waved at him, and it looked so real.

And then he’d walk nervously to Jon’s office, with some undefined question he had to ask him, and open the door to find Jon sat at his desk, like always.

But this version of Jon didn’t glance up with obvious annoyance, and let his face settle into a proper frown when he saw who exactly had disturbed him.

This Jon smiled at him, eyes warm like he’d only imagined and never gotten to see. He’d get up, and circle around his desk. Walk up to Martin, and only stop when he was standing well within his personal space. Still with that look on his face, like it was a lovely surprise to see Martin, specifically. 

And then Jon would take him gently by the shoulders, and lean in to whisper, _ Haven’t you kept us waiting long enough? _

Martin would wake up then, with the words still ringing in his ears. Go up and make himself a cup of tea, or just pace aimlessly through the Archive’s kitchen, or reach for the fog that always lingered in the corners nowadays, dulling his rioting heart with cold numbness.

And so when Jon (alive, moving, _ talking _) left his chair, Martin takes a step back, almost involuntarily. 

Confusion flashes over Jon’s face, followed swiftly by resignation and what could be hurt.

“Ah, I’m sorry… I suppose I should-”  
  


“You’re dead,” Martin hears himself say. His voice sounds odd to his own ears, unnaturally flat. 

Jon actually smiles a little at that, but it isn’t happy. 

“Not anymore, at least not dead enough to count.”

“We- we _ buried _ you,” Martin insists pointlessly. An awful feeling is swelling inside his chest, aching and irrepressible, so different that the numbness that’d been growing after he’d started working for Peter.

He had expected Jon to flinch at this, or to stutter out an argument, but instead Jon just shrugs one thin shoulder. 

“It didn’t stick,” he says, and there’s something unfamiliar about his face. Not like Martin’s nightmares, where his mind tried to imagine an expression that he’d never seen the man wear. More like one of those ‘spot the difference’ pictures. A niggling detail.

“Were you just… the whole time, you…?” His voice fails on him halfway through the question, and he’s almost glad that he doesn’t have to hear himself finish it. _ You were alive down there the whole time? _

Jon looks away before he answers, and it sends a frisson of wrongness down his spine. Out of the corner of his eye, Martin sees the walls and ceiling start to inch inwards. The only thing in the room that doesn’t move closer is Jon. There’s a distance Martin has grown familiar with, one almost imperceptibly lined with fog.

“Not at first. I _ was _ killed in the Unknowing. And, I-” his mouth twists, and the walls shudder closer in response, “It seemed to everyone that I was dead. No pulse, no breathing. But I was dreaming still.”

Martin sucks in an inhale, and chokes on a cough when he finds the air choked with dust. Jon doesn’t seem to notice, his eyes distant and distracted.

“It took a few months and some intervention for me to wake up. Of course, by then the Buried had waited for long enough. I was, I _ am _, a servant of the Beholding, but I was buried alive, and that’s the undisputed territory of the too-close-I-cannot-breathe.”

Jon’s tone changes when he starts to talk about his time being buried. Some of the lines in his face smooth out, and his voice is a few notes lighter. 

Martin can just barely feel the ceiling brushing the top of his head. He can barely restrain himself from reaching up to try to push it away, stop it from falling. That will just make it worse. 

If he pays it any mind, it’s going to go in for the kill. He doesn’t even think he could step into the Lonely, right now - there is no room for loneliness, here.

“So, after a few months of, well. After a few months, I started to welcome the embrace of the Buried. It’s hard not to, when you’re so well acquainted.”

There’s an almost fond sound to Jon’s words, now, and Martin’s skin crawls. Some of it must show on his face, because Jon looks at him and raises his palms reassuringly, even as the office chair he was just sitting in is slowly incorporated into the growing wall of soil behind him.

“No, no, don’t- I won’t _ do _anything to you. I couldn’t - I mean, I won’t. Of course.” 

And Martin can’t stay silent anymore, because Jon is giving him that same earnest look he gave him before the Unknowing, the look that says, _ don’t worry, just trust me. _And it hurts to see, even more than the walls of Jon’s office coming close to crush him while Jon tells him he’s safe.

“Then _ stop _, Jon!”

“Stop _ what _\- oh, good lord.” 

And Jon just, he glances around the office and it moves outwards again, like the space has snapped to attention, like the room itself has exhaled. For Martin’s part, his knees give out the second he is not actively being pressed upright.

He doesn’t manage to fall completely on his arse, because Jon somehow catches him around his shoulders and by his arm, while apologizing profusely. 

And isn’t that just what he needed, to be touched by another person for the first time in _ months _. It’s uncomfortable and too much and claustrophobic in a way he knows has nothing to do with any fear deity and it’s so nice that he almost starts to cry. 

Instead, he wraps his arms around Jon and turns the grip into a hug.

For a single, beautiful moment, everything is warmth and comfort and familiarity, despite the smell of freshly turned earth and rotting paper, because it is still _ Jon. _

Jon who is alive and breathing in his arms. Jon who came back after all.

Then Jon tightens his grip, and Martin realizes it might have been a bad idea to hug an avatar of the Buried. 

The pressure builds quicker than before, and Martin can only hold on and bury his head in Jon’s shoulder as the world becomes close and crushing. He can feel Jon’s breath on his neck, hear his words through the rushing of blood in his ears and the furious pounding of his heart: “This could help, let me help, this’ll fix it…”

Though his betrayal and biting disappointment, Martin can’t help but enjoy the timbre of Jon’s voice, breathless in his ear. It’s not a bad thing to die to.

It hurts, it hurts like a thousand bruises, but Martin realizes with a start that he’s not dying. His bones creak but don’t splinter. He’s gasping for air, but he can still breathe.

And then, inexplicably, Jon lets him go. He loosens his embrace, and the pressure departs like it’d never been there. 

Or… not quite. It just doesn’t feel foreign. It feels like a part of him, returned, pressing into his skin with sensations long-forgotten. Like he’s more himself. Like he’s taken half a step away from the Lonely numbness he’s grown used to - like it’s not as close, as easily available.

With a start, he realizes he has a choice to make. He could pull back, step into the fog still pooling in the shadows, return to Peter’s side. Stay safe. Stay away.

Or…

Or. 

Not even a second has passed before he’s made up his mind. He just about throws himself at Jon, almost knocking him over in his haste.

It feels like every bit of himself he’s pushed away since the Unknowing, every sliver he’s cut away in exchange for Peter’s protection, every little bit of himself he’s lost or hidden or thrown out is suddenly pushing against him, insistently, crushed into his being again by the unbearable pressure around them and Martin gasps, the fog finally dissipating from his lungs. 

“I was on my own,” he gasps, unable to find words for the flood of emotions. “I was all on my own.”

Jon’s arms only tighten around him.

“Not anymore.”

-

Peter, by most people’s standards, was no spring chicken. He was the captain of a seafaring vessel, and he dressed and acted the occasionally anachronistic part.

However, compared to the typical Lukas (not counting those excommunicated from the family, obviously) he was obnoxiously modern.

Case in point: he owned a phone. And not just any old rotary phone that plugged into the wall, much limited by the Lonely’s inherent soundproofing capabilities. A _ cellular _ phone. 

A phone which spoke with satellites in order to convey messages from far-away individuals that may wish to speak with him. A phone that ceased to function after a short few days of use, and while not especially pricy, were annoying to replace. 

A phone that one Elias Bouchard, née Magnus, has insisted he purchase in order to fulfill his duties as the new head of the Magnus Institute. 

Hateful man.

But he had dutifully acquired one of the irritating things, and after a period of trial and error, made it so it could not make its little ringing noises when he received an e-mail or text message. However, it _ was _ permitted to notify him about updates in any of the little colorful games he had found it could play. That was fine.

And so it was quite a shock when he checked it one pleasantly empty afternoon to find that it had made its little bell-sound to indicate he had received a _ message _ . From the human resources manager, of all people. About the _ upcoming birthday party _ of one of the researchers, whose names he had made an active effort to forget.

His phone buzzed again, and asked him a question, to which he thoughtlessly responded in the affirmative. He regrets it the instant he received _ yet another _ notification that he had accepted the invitation to the aforementioned staff member’s birthday party.

This would not stand.

He moved through the fog to Martin’s office. He could have him fix the phone, clearly something was wrong with it.

However, when he reached the room, it was not only unoccupied, but missing the chill it normally held. Instead of the reassuring wisps of fog he had expected to find, there was a set of dusty footprints that made a circuit to the empty desk and back.

Peter frowned at the tracks, rubbing his beard. He wasn’t so oblivious that he couldn’t recognise a calling-card of the Buried.

He sighed heavily and started to make his way towards the basement. Martin would be so tiresome to deal with if it turned out Peter had failed to prevent yet another attack on his precious Archives.

As he moved closer to the Archives, something else made itself apparent. Not an attack from another power, but something from his own god. It hung like perfume in the air, familiar but hard to place.

Only when a tendril of fog started to wind its way familiarly between Peter’s ribs did it sink in. Loss, something was missing, something has been _ taken _ . But it didn’t make _ sense _ , nothing here was _ his _, nothing belonged to him-

Oh no.

He started to walk faster, taking the steps as quickly as he could, following the traces of _ lost, rejection, dismissal _ right to the door of the Archivist’s office. Before he opens the door, there’s a moment of relief because _ of course, _Martin has just taken up his mourning again. 

Like a dog with a bone, that boy, but at least it was something easy to deal with, something he could work with.

He soundlessly opens the door, and-

The Archivist is back. The Archivist is _ back _ and he reeks of the Watcher and the Choke, and he’s got Martin _ in his arms. _

And while Peter watches, disappointment and disgust raging inside him, the Archivist looks up from where he’d had his face buried in Martin’s shoulder. He looks through the fog, looks Peter in the eye, and, god, what is it about Archivists that lets them look like they’ve seen into him and found his story unsatisfying?

And the Archivist, every bit as terrifying and ruinous as his predecessor, mouths at him to _ Get out. _

And Peter goes.

  
-

Melanie didn’t want to go back to the Archives. One day she wouldn’t, she’d promised herself - one day she’d be able to resist the lure, the burning need to go, the wracking pains and groaning hunger that forced her back. She’d been able to resist for a week, now, but she hadn’t been able to sleep at all last night. She needed to go. 

The building rose before her like a looming blade, waiting for her to stick her head in. She’d heard the stories of the other assistants. Sasha. Tim. Even Micheal, one time, long ago. This place would kill her, sure as anything.

At least fucking _ Elias _ wasn’t there anymore. And this Peter guy knew well enough to stay out of her fucking way. She sighed, hefted her bag higher, and stepped through the doors. After a brief nod to Rosie, she started down the stairs to the Archives.

She stopped halfway. Something was… different. She didn’t know what, but it was something. Her steps became more wary, and she closed one hand around the knife she kept in her shoulder bag. Different was never good.

She took the last steps warily, turned a corner, and immediately threw the knife at the monster masquerading as _ Jon _ of all people as it leisurely walked down the corridor. 

The monster yelped and fell back, barely dodging the throw. It had been poorly aimed anyway, Melanie too shocked and angry to put proper power behind it. She cursed herself as she went for the second knife - 

Only to _ fall, _a pressure like the roof has fallen in making her crumple for to her knees, then to her elbows, then with her face pressed into the wet earth where she could swear there had been tiles only moments before. 

“Lord… Melanie? Is that you?” The monster asked and it sounded so much like Jon it _ hurt _. 

“Shut up,” she snarled, fighting to get her hands under her. “Shut _ up _ , don’t you fucking dare - “ The pressure released, bit by bit, and she finally got a hand down, trying to propel herself to standing but not getting further than her knees before that unrelenting pressure pushed down again. Oh, that monster wanted her to _ see _ , wanted her to _ watch _the way it had trapped her - how it had taken Jon’s form. 

“Melanie, it’s _ me _,” the monster said, still sitting, looking at her with imploring eyes that couldn’t fucking fool her. “I know it’s a lot to take in, but just let me - “

“Shut your fucking mouth, he’s _ dead _, I don’t fall for your fucking tricks - “ her bag was still at her side, and if she could just distract it….

Before she could think of a plan, the monster sighed.

“**Melanie**,” it said, and god she thought she’d forgotten that awful lurching tug on her mind but the familiarity of it almost brought her down to elbows again. 

“**Melanie, who am I?**” And the answer poured out of her, no will, no resistance. 

“Jonathan Sims,” she said, and the pressure on her shoulders instantly disappeared in a wave that almost left her dizzy. It was him. Somehow, impossibly, it was him. 

And he had fucking _ compelled her _. 

“I thought I told you not to fucking use your mind powers on me,” she growled, still on her knees, not trusting her legs quite yet.

Jon, the absolute bastard, just laughed. And it was that, more than anything, that threw her for a loop. The Jon she’d known before the Unknowing had been cold. Rude. Distant, with only moments of kindness seeping through. 

This was the first time she’d heard him laugh.

“In my defense, you did throw a knife at me.” Her focus snapped back to reality where Jon was now standing, knife held handle-first towards her, his other held out to help her up. 

She hesitated. Then she took the hand, grainy with dirt, and allowed Jon to pull her to her feet. 

-

Georgie punched him. 

“How fucking dare you!” she yelled, pacing the living room. “I had to find out through _ Melanie _ ! You didn’t even _ think _ to tell me? No one thought, oh hey, Georgie might want to know that her _ best friend _ has _ returned from the dead _, including you! What the fuck!” 

Jon, to his (minimal) credit, was looking sheepish.

  
“I didn’t have a phone?” He tried. Georgie narrowed her eyes, and he winced. “I mean… I couldn’t leave the Archives, for a bit. What with being legally dead and all. And no one but Melanie had your number.” There was a hint of curiosity in his words, now. “Why does she even - “ 

  
“No, you aren’t allowed to ask questions right now!” Partly because no, he wasn’t allowed to, and partly because she barely knew the answer herself.

She shook her head. No, she had to focus.

“You died!” She felt this needed repeating. “You died and disappeared for eight months! And didn’t even tell me you came back until now?”

“In my defense, I was in the same place.” Jon’s terrible humor had never been less welcome, and it seemed he realized this at the same time as another punch landed on his arm. “Ouch!”

“You deserved that,” she sniffed, and god, she had really started crying now? Apparently, if Jon’s familiar _ uh oh you’re crying _ face was anything to go by.

Fuck. This.

“I hate you,” she said, voice warbling, and opened her arms for a hug. Jon only hesitated for a second before stepping into her arms. 

“I really am sorry, you know” he said plaintively, face buried in her neck. “I didn’t mean to worry you.” 

“Shut up, Jon,” she said fondly. He did, and wrapped his arms around her almost as an afterthought.

His hugs had definitely improved. 

-

Elias sat crosslegged on his prison cot, looking out over the world through closed eyes. Things were looking up - Jon had returned, stronger than ever. The Buried has its claws in him, of course, but that was no real hindrance. Not to him. Another scar to add to the collection.

He would soon be ready. Even with Martin out of the picture and Peter sulking, he’d figure out a way to introduce Jon to the Lonely. And after that… Elias shivered in sheer exultation. So long. He was ready. 

A rumble tumbled through the room, almost subdermal, thrumming through his bones. Elias opened one eye in annoyance. Who was playing rock music at this hour? 

He would be happy to be out of here. It was too small for his taste.

Just as he thought that, the rumble grew: went from a shiver in his bones to toppling the papers off his desk. 

_ What the _ \- Elias stumbled to his feet, throwing his focus far and wide to find the cause. It wasn't natural, of course it wasn't. But who- 

Martin was sitting at a desk, writing that awful poetry of his.

Peter was - somewhere. The _ Tundra _, probably. That’s where he usually took his sulking after a lost bet. 

Basira and Daisy were in a park of all things, Basira reading out loud to Daisy as she stretched out in the sun. During work hours. 

Melanie was similarly laying on a couch with her head in one Georgina Barker’s lap, watching some inane television show. _ Also _ during work hours. 

As the rumble grew to a great cracking roar, Elias turned his mind to Jon.

Jon was staring back at him with every one of his Eyes. Their gazes met for a single second - and then Jon blinked, and suddenly all Elias could feel was the pain of a thousand eyes filling with dirt. 

He stumbled as the ground under him suddenly cracked, and as he blinked away the dust he looked up - 

_ toomuchtooclose no end no up _

It was then that Elias understood, cleaner that Seeing and simpler than Knowing, that he’d lost Jon forever.

Losing Jon had nothing to do with the building that was crumbling around him, the empty stone walls that rushed in from all sides in one last embrace. It had nothing to do with the double-layered view of falling dirt and splintering stone in both the prison and the panopticon. It was that Jon had turned his gaze away, even before he had decided to kill Elias. 

Elias died, and he died unwatched.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #eliasdiechallenge finally succeeded

**Author's Note:**

> jon is having such a bad day. well, week. ....well, a few bad months. or maybe just more of an unfortunate lifetime. poor jon : (
> 
> inspired by a brief line in needsmoreyellow's fic 'mend' in which martin briefly broaches the possibility that they might not have noticed jon was still alive and very possibly buried him. 
> 
> note that this fic is written up to the point where we're happy to call it done, and it will be posted in installments over the next few weeks
> 
> thanks to my partner Tiili97 for coming up with this appalling idea, allowing me to write it with you, and then getting outraged when i made it sadder. you're the best and also you started it <3 <3


End file.
